Kramer wrote:
(1) He ate a sandwich.
and
(2) He woolfed down a tuna hoagy.
He claims that they say basically the same (thing).
I replied in my Dictiveness and Formality in Grice. His example as per the header. I agree with Grice and Kramer that the header means the same as
(4) The President's advisers approved the idea.
So, why bother with a more informal way of expressing what it can be properly expressed formally.
Grice wasn't sure; he was sure, though, that Hare's quantum pragmatics (his subatomic particles of logic with the clistic, the tropic, the neustic and the phrastic) was still insufficient to deal with The Way of Words, as we knew them.
Cheers,
JL
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His other examples, Grice's, include:
ReplyDelete(a) He is a sanctimonius, hypocritical, racist, reactionary, money-grubber.
[INFORMAL]
and
(b) He's just an evangelist.
[LESS INFORMAL].
Grice was from an early age concerned with 'usage' and levels of formality. You see, in Oxford, the vogue was to speak of "use", never "meaning". Grice changed all that for the good (of life) and for good.
His early example was:
(and he did that by demystifying 'meaning' and claiming 'use' and 'usage' otiose):
(c) The ----- archbishop fell down the ----- stairs and bumped ----- ----- like -----.
He comments: "It would no doubt be possible to fill in the gaps in (c) with such a combo of indecencies and blasphemies that no one would EVER use such an expression. But[I would not] be tempted to deem (c) self-contradictory" (WoW, p. 150 -- from an essay written in 1946!).
One of Grice's examples especially dear to me concerns his "prim and proper" Aunt Matilda,
(d) He is a runt.
She knows what it means, but she "would rather be seen dead than uttering it" (WoW, vi). She has the procedure in her repertoire, but lacks the willingness to put it to practice.
When I attended a seminar with Edoardo Antonio Rabossi, I presented the seminar with my "Aunt Matilda". I keep those notes.